Explore "The Old Oak Tree's Last Dream" by Hans Christian Andersen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A CHRISTMAS TALE.
There stood in a wood, high up on the side of a sloping hill near the open shore, a very old oak tree. It was about three hundred and sixty-five years old, but those long years were not more than as many single rotations of the earth for us men. We are awake during the day, and sleep during the night, and have then our dreams: with the tree it is otherwise. A tree is awake for three quarters of a year. It only sleeps in winter -- that is _its_ night -- after the long day which is called spring, summer, and autumn.